A short life of the author
Robert Walser (1878–1956) was born on 15 April 1878 in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. He worked as a clerk, a servant, and a butler — occupations that pervade his fiction.
Life and Career
Walser’s three Berlin novels — Geschwister Tanner (The Tanners, 1907), Der Gehülfe (The Assistant, 1908), and Jakob von Gunten (1909) — were published to critical respect but commercial failure. Jakob von Gunten — a diary kept by a student at a school for servants, where the curriculum consists of learning to be small, obedient, and nothing — is his masterpiece.
In 1929, Walser entered a mental institution and essentially stopped writing. He spent the last twenty-eight years of his life in asylums in Waldau and Herisau. He was found dead in the snow on Christmas Day 1956, having collapsed during a walk.
His “microscripts” — tiny texts written in pencil in a diminished script so small it was long thought to be a secret code — were deciphered in the 1970s, revealing a vast trove of late work.
Major Works and Themes
Walser wrote about smallness, service, walking, nature, and the comedy of insignificance. His prose is light, ironic, digressive, and strangely joyful. Kafka said: “Walser’s books make one feel so good that one no longer feels the need to read.”
Key Works
- Jakob von Gunten (1909)
- The Walk (1917)
Collecting Walser
German originals (Bruno Cassirer, Suhrkamp) are the primary collected form. English translations (NYRB Classics, New Directions) bring $10–$25. Walser died in 1956.